


Loveless

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Enemy Lovers, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 19:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6022579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fourth time, he asks her why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loveless

After the fourth time, he finally asks her why she comes back. Her answer is enlightening, even though it’s mostly a lie.

“I want to fuck up your world.”

She hands him a cigarette and a knife. He doesn’t smoke and he won’t cut her, even when she asks. But he never fails to let her in. If nothing else, he’s polite.

“Why do you let me in?” she asks, refusing to go just yet. She hasn’t quite forgiven him for the way he acts afterwards. She pushes back, trying to get a reaction.

“You don’t go away,” he tells her, lighting her cigarette with a Zippo she brought him the last time she came to visit his great big…brain. “You’ll scare the neighbors eventually, so I open the door.”

He might be lying about that. But she’s not sure. He’s a poor liar at best. He tries to pretend he doesn’t enjoy it. That’s a joke. After the second time(s), she wasn’t able to stand up properly for two days–and the last time something like that had happened to her, she’d been nineteen and as tender-eyed as that damn Texan girl.

“I like you,” she admits, taking a long drag off her cigarette. And it’s true. She really likes him. She wants to be able to stay in his apartment for a little longer, maybe see what’s in his bookshelf, what sort of music he listens to. “You’re interesting.”

“You’re not.”

It stings. But this is the pattern. She stings him into having sex, and he returns the favor afterwards. They part angrily and then he waits for her to come back, drunk or high or in a particularly strange mood.

“I’m not in love with you,” she says. “Don’t think that I care if you insult me. You’re just a good lay. That’s all.”

“Witness my level of caring,” he replies.

She wonders when she got so embarrassingly talkative after sex. It’s the fact that he won’t react to her. He stares into space, pretending that she’s not there, the way he always does. No matter what she does, he won’t look at her. And it hurts.

“Good,” she says. “Because I’m not in love with you.”

She starts to pick up her clothes. Blouse first, skirt next, her shoes are somewhere under the bed. Fuck the underwear. She’ll get it next time. She has plenty.

“What does your apartment look like?” he asks, surprising her. She almost gets out from under the bed to look up at him, but her shoes are important. They’re expensive. He’s not.

“It’s nice. Mostly white,” she says from under the bed. “You could come see me there. I have lots of very interesting things you’d like.”

“You’d like me to come there,” he says, still shell-shocked and dispassionate. She doesn’t know how to answer him.

“It would be a change of scene.”

“You’d like for me to come to you,” he says, apparently thinking about things. “What about other places?”

She emerges, holding her shoes. They look dusty and beat-down. His eyes are resolutely not going to look at her. Just the shoes. Damn him to hell.

“Like where?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “On your desk in front of all the cameras. My old office at the hotel. In the bathroom of some cheap bar, my hand over your mouth so the rest of the patrons don’t hear us. In the back seat of that very nice sedan you own and hate. The Santa Monica Pier. Strange places.”

The catch of her own breath betrays her. His idea of the bar–and it would be a sleazy bar, the kind of place she would only go if she was looking for a quickie, and even then, not in a million years–is right up her alley. He knows it, too.

“I don’t know,” she says, heart fluttering in her chest. He hates her so much that he thinks up beautiful things for her to want that he won’t give her. It’s touching. No one else would care as much about her. No one else would even give her an elaborate death. A broken neck, that would be it. Maybe a couple of bullets in the head if she’s lucky.

He hates her. And she absorbs the power of that emotion as deeply as if it had been love. Maybe, she thinks, maybe that’s why he opens the door.

They care. Who else does?

“You know.”

Her heart speeds up, her breathing gets nervous. All of the power she thinks she has and the minute she opens his door, it’s all his. He knows it, too. Bastard.

“Maybe. Yes,” she says, knowing that he’s going to hurt her, hurt her badly enough to drive her out of his apartment. “Very much yes.”

“Get out, Lilah,” he orders her. Like she’s his whore. Fucking teases her into a frenzy and then–get out. Who the fuck does he think he is, telling her anything?

He knows exactly who he is. And maybe–she hates him–maybe she is his whore. But then again, who’s to say that he’s not hers?

He has her number. But he’ll be at her apartment. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Definitely before she decides to come back and they both know it. If they both didn’t know, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

“See you later,” she says, kissing him on the forehead. He flinches. “I’m even looking forward to it.”

Game point to her, she walks out of his apartment.

She trembles all the way down to her car, but she won’t cry. Because she doesn’t fucking love him. Because he doesn’t fucking have any power over her. Because big girls–and she’s the biggest of the big girls–do not cry.

She’s not in love. She’s not in love. She doesn’t forget that.


End file.
